Acetylene and ethylene are hydrocarbons with the formula C2H2 and C2H4, respectively. They are widely used in chemical industry, and their worldwide production exceeds that of any other organic compound. In the United States and Europe alone, approximately 90% of ethylene is used to produce ethylene oxide, ethylene dichloride, ethyl benzene and polyethylene. Methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen can be used as raw material gases for producing ethylene. Major industrial reactions of ethylene include the preparation of polymers via polymerization and these polymers all generated from crude oil steam cracking at 750-950° C.
One common practice to handle organic waste residues from municipal or industrial today is by anaerobic digestion and gasification. The outputs of these processes include carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4) are often used to generate electricity. The generated electricity will either be consumed on site or feed to the grid to public. However, the electricity generated in the past can only provide less than 1% of local consumption. Feeding electricity generated only to the grid is not competitive at arm's length prices. This leads to processing of organic wastes in this manner as being economically unattractive. Recovering electrical energy from carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4) are typically regarded as low base-load and more costly than hydro-, wind- and nuclear-electricity generation. As a consequence, lower income regions do not harvest these gases and they often are just released to the atmosphere. These carbon containing gases, i.e. CH4, CO and CO2, will contribute to the atmospheric carbon stock or content or in other words as greenhouse gases. However, this would increase carbon content in the atmosphere, and is considered as detrimental to the world climate. Therefore, our environment needs a new method to capture carbon from organic end of life-cycle matter and re-capture carbons which are already released to the atmosphere.
Since there is large demand in acetylene but big supply in the raw material gas for acetylene or ethylene production which could be supplied from decomposition of organic matter into energy rich gases by anaerobic digestion and gasification, therefore, there is a potential in converting abundant organic matter into acetylene or ethylene in a close-loop system so that downstream chemical synthesis could be extended to the realization of Atmospheric Carbon Re-use.
The present invention seeks to produce acetylene or ethylene more effectively and efficiently, to capture carbon from organic end of life-cycle, to re-capture carbon which has already been released to the atmosphere, or to provide a useful alternative to the public.